Redeemer Church reaches out to Chambersburg

CHAMBERSBURG - There's a new church in town offering Biblical teaching and spiritual care to anyone, wherever they might be on the spectrum of faith, said Pastor Jeff Cottone, leader of Redeemer Church, which currently meets for worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings at the Chambersburg Rec Center, 235 S. Third St., Chambersburg.

"We welcome people of any background - the faithful, disillusioned, seeking, skeptical - to come and learn with us about what it means to follow Jesus,” said Cottone, who leads Redeemer Church along with elders Troy Hostetter and Dan Smith.

Redeemer Church of Chambersburg was started by Hope Church of Shippensburg. Both are members of the same denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Like Redeemer, Hope started as a “church-plant” of a small group of people wanting to reach their community and establish a new church, Cottone said.

Hope Church began as a small group of people meeting in a living room in Shippensburg in 1990. The denomination brought Hope’s current pastor, David Fidati, to lead the church-plant, and the church held its first worship service Dec. 9, 1990. The elders of Hope Church first discussed expanding their outreach to Chambersburg through church planting as early as 1995.

Their plans wouldn’t materialize until 2014. Jeff Cottone had become a member of Hope’s congregation in 2004 while he worked as a campus minister at Shippensburg University. He became an elder at Hope in 2009 and was ordained in 2012 as the assistant pastor of Hope. His role transitioned to full-time church-planter in September of 2014, when Redeemer began weekly Sunday evening worship in Chambersburg. It held its first Sunday morning service in December 2014.

The new church was named "Redeemer," he said, as "a reminder to us that we all need redemption - every single one of us."

In addition to Sunday worship and community outreach events, Redeemer has “Community Groups”: smaller groups of people who meet during the week in homes for fellowship, Bible study and prayer.

Services are family friendly - much of the congregation are young families, and Cottone himself is a husband and father of two young children. Redeemer provides a nursery each Sunday, along with Children’s Church on three Sundays of the month. Dress is casual. The service is a blend of traditional and contemporary elements.